Chapter Palmyrene to Pandolf of P by Brewer's Readers Handbook

Pamphlet (Mr.), a penny-a-liner. His great wish was “to be taken up for sedition.” He writes on both sides, for, as he says, he has “two hands, ambo dexter.”

“Time has been,” he says, “when I could turn a penny by an earthquake, or live upon a jail distemper, or dine upon a bloody murder; but now that’s all over—nothing will do now but roasting a minister, or telling the people they are ruined. The people of England are never so happy as when you tell them they are ruined.”—Murphy: The Upholsterer, ii. 1 (1758).

PAN, Nature personified, especially the vital crescent power of nature.

Universal Pan,
Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance,
Led on the eternal spring.

Milton: Paradise Lost, iv.266, etc. (1665).

Pan, in Spenser’s ecl. iv., is Henry VIII., and “Syrinx”is Anne Boleyn. In ecl. v. “Pan” stands for Jesus Christ in one passage, and for God the Father in another.—Spenser: Shepheardes Calendar (1572).

Pan (The Dead), a poem by Mrs. Browning (1844), founded on the legend that when Christ died on the cross a cry swept across the sea that “Great Pan is dead!”

Pan (The Great), Francois M. A. de Voltaire; also called “The Dictator of Letters” (1694–1778).

Panaceas.

(1)Ahmed’s apple, or the apple of Samarcand. (See p.16.)

(2)Aladdin’s ring was a preservative against all the ills that flesh is heir to. (See p.18.)

(3)Balsam of Fierabras(The). (See p.85.)

(4)Panthera’s borne (q.v.).

(5)Unguent of Prometheus (The) rendered the body invulnerable.

Thetis dipped Achilles in the river Styx, and every part of his body which the water touched was tendered invulnerable. (See Achilles’ Heel, p.5; Priamus, p. 870.)

Then there were the Youth Restorers; the healers of wounds, such as Achilles’ spear, and the spear of Telephus (see Spear), Gilbert’s sword and cere-cloth (see Gilbert, p.422) (see Old Age Restored to Youth, 772); and many others.

Pancaste or Ca mpaspe, one of the concubines of Alexander the Great. Apellês fell in love with her while he was employed in painting the king of Macedon, and Alexander, out of regard to the artist, gave her to him for a wife. Apellês selected for his “Venus Rising from the Sea” (usually called “Venus Anadyomenê”) this beautiful Athenian woman, together with Phrynê another courtezan.

(Phrynê was also the academy figure for the “Cnidian Venus” of Praxitelês.)

Pancha Tantra, a collection of Hindû fables (sixth century B.C.).

Pancks, a quick, short, eager, dark man, with too much “way.” He dressed in black and rusty iron grey; had jetblack beads for eyes, a scrubby little black chin, wiry black hair striking out from his head in prongs like hair-pins, and a complexion that was very dingy by nature, or very dirty by art, or a compound of both. He had dirty hands, and dirty, broken nails, and looked as if he had been in the coals. He snorted and sniffed, and puffed and blew, and was generally in a perspiration. It was Mr. Pancks who “moled out” the secret that Mr. Dorrit, imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea prison, was heir-at-law to a great